Prayer is not a guarantee of the outcome we seek, but an invitation to remain connected to God through every outcome.

One of the surprising joys of a parent, and perhaps even more so of a grandparent, is attending a child’s siddur presentation, and seeing the children’s smiling faces as they are called to the stage to receive their very first siddur. I always feel overwhelmed with emotion; my husband, the more emotional of the two of us, invariably cries. I understand that this is the beginning of their relationship with prayer and their relationship with the Almighty. We, the adults in the audience, are hopeful that the words and the depth of prayer will become a source of structure, of routine, and at times of comfort and strength. We pray that their present excitement for this new “book” will stay with them for their entire lives.

As we age up, most of us experience many different relationships around prayer. Some days the words on the page of the siddur go from my eyes to my mouth without passing through my brain or heart; I finish davening and am not sure if I said everything! I imagine this sometimes happens to others too. Our relationship with prayer changes day to day and definitely at times of great happiness and also at times of crisis. For most of us, there are many times when we feel that God is truly looking out for us: He is with us and we feel that a prayer – even unspoken – was answered. A difficult situation resolves itself. A door unexpectedly opens. We feel His presence.

And then there are the other moments. When we pray for healing, yet illness progresses. When we pray for clarity, yet uncertainty remains. In those moments, we may wonder whether our prayers matter at all.

The Torah itself does not shy away from this tension. In this week’s parsha, Beha’alotecha, Moshe Rabbeinu offers two prayers and receives two very different responses.The first occurs when the people complain and God angrily brings a fire that destroys the outskirts of the camp. Moshe cries out to God, and the fire immediately ceases. Through Moshe’s prayer, the danger immediately passes.

Later in the parsha, Miriam is stricken with tzara’at after speaking negatively about Moshe. Moshe turns to God with one of the shortest and most heartfelt prayers in the Torah: “Keil na refa na lah” – “Please God, heal her.” God hears Moshe’s plea; Miriam will be healed. Yet the healing is not necessarily immediate or complete. There are still consequences. Miriam must remain outside the camp for seven days before rejoining the people. Moshe’s prayer is answered, but not exactly as he requested. God agrees to Moshe’s request, but this time requires a waiting period before the request is fulfilled.

Much later in the Torah, in Sefer Devarim, we read about Moshe praying again, but this is a most painful prayer narrative. Moshe recounts how he pleaded with God to allow him to enter the Land of Israel. The Torah uses the word va’etchanan, indicating a repeated and heartbreaking plea. According to Chazal, Moshe offered hundreds of prayers seeking permission to cross the Jordan. This time, however, the answer is no. God tells him, “Enough. Do not continue speaking to Me about this matter.”

In our parsha, God says about Moshe that “he is trusted throughout My household. With him I speak mouth to mouth plainly and not in riddles and he beholds the likeness of the Lord.” One of Moshe’s aforementioned prayers is granted immediately. Another is granted, but with some time delay. And another is not granted at all. If Moshe, God’s most trusted servant, could receive such an emphatic “no” when praying, what are we to make of our own prayers and our own relationship with God? What answer can we expect to get? What point is there to praying?

Perhaps an answer can be found in the Book of Tehillim, a book that we have turned to throughout history during times of crisis. Sometimes, Dovid HaMelech speaks of feeling God’s presence so intently that he proclaims “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” He feels that God is with him, that He is a presence, an ally, friend and confidante. Yet there are other places in Tehillim when Dovid feels so abandoned by God that he cries out, “ My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.”

Dovid HaMelech’s experience is, in many ways, the human experience. If you have lived long enough, you have likely sensed both the closeness of God and, at times, His apparent absence. Dovid wrote about both so that we may understand that each is part of a genuine relationship with the Divine.

We should not pretend that we can possibly understand God’s ways or His response to our prayers. We know that bad things happen. But so do good things.We are therefore encouraged to pray fervently, to cry, to plead and to hope.

Tefillah is a relational process rather than a transactional one. Intellectually, we acknowledge that God is not a vending machine and that His wisdom, and the complex way in which He runs this world, may result in a “no” for reasons beyond our finite understanding. However, Judaism insists that we never allow this intellectual reality to stifle our emotional outcry. God does not seek our stoic resignation. He seeks our honest hearts.

Moshe knew that God could say no, yet he continued to pray. Dovid experienced moments of despair, yet he continued to pray. The Jewish people have endured centuries of uncertainty, loss and challenge, yet we continue to pray. Perhaps that is because prayer is not only about changing God’s mind, as it were, but also about changing us. Prayer transforms helplessness into connection. It transforms anxiety into trust. It reminds us that we are never alone, even when we do not understand what is happening.

When we pray for those who are ill, lonely, grieving or struggling, we are reminded that we are connected to one another. Their pain becomes part of our concern. And when we bring our own fears before God, we are reminded that our lives unfold within a relationship that is larger than ourselves. The goal of prayer is not merely to obtain what we seek, because we don’t always receive it, but to deepen our constant, hopeful connection to the Divine. That connection can endure even in the gaping silence that follows a “no.”

Perhaps that is why I become emotional watching a child receive a siddur. None of us knows where life will take that child. There will be moments when his or her prayers seem to be answered immediately, moments when the answer is “not yet,” and moments when the answer appears to be “no.” There will be times when God’s presence feels unmistakable and times when He seems distant. Yet the siddur teaches us to continue the conversation. A relationship with the Almighty is not based upon a certainty that God will always answer our prayers as we wish, but rather upon the courage to keep praying, keep hoping and keep reaching toward Him, whether the answer is yes, not yet or no.

As written by Bassie Taubes, Ematai’s Director of Community Outreach and published in The Jewish Link.